Christmas break.

I wasn’t a grinch this year! I even suggested Christmas music a couple of times, which is an enormous deal. I was really trying to enjoy my last obligation-free time with my love while he was on Christmas break and while I’m in this delightful period of no work, no school, no nothing.

Nathanael and I recreating our post-engagement picture two years later. | My dad had a fancy choir concert at Abravanel Hall. | My sister bathed our cat and he looked so pathetic afterward! | Making slushies out of freshly fallen snow (just plain snow for me).

My family made gingerbread houses (from kits, naturally), and theirs looked a lot cooler than ours.

Piping icing is apparently harder than it looks.

Nathanael’s first Christmas with the in-laws!

New Year’s.

My friend Anna, who has put up with me for the longest of any of my friends (16+ years), threw an awesome New Year’s Eve party which was perfectly timed because Nathanael had been saying, “I’ve never had a NYE in Utah before,” like it was going to be something special. That made me nervous because I had zero ideas of what the crap married people even do in Provo on New Year’s (hello, the singles dances were the obligatory activity for like 6 years of my life*). So thank you, Anna.

Also, the picture on the right is from the amazing moment where Nathanael actually picked the right box for Deal or No Deal at the local arcade.

* Those singles dances. Maggie, Kenzie, and I always had such high expectations for them, which were sometimes met but usually not. My favorite New Year’s memory is when Kenzie and I sang “Drink with Me” (from Les Mis) in her kitchen while drinking Martinelli’s, while her mom looked on in amused disbelief that we were actually that weird. Which reminds me of the time Maggie sang the entire “Star-Spangled Banner” in that same kitchen. Okay, time to get off Memory Lane because no one can even appreciate how funny that was unless you were there, and I know you weren’t there.

College.

Nathanael started his last semester. THAT IS AMAZING.

Being pregnant.

My stomach gets bigger every day. This is a weird experience. I also have to say that pregnancy is approximately one gajillion times better than people make it sound, so for all you ladies out there worried about it—don’t be. As with most things, pregnancy is what you make it. (Excluding those few people who do legitimately get really sick. That seriously blows. But even then, a helpless attitude certainly wouldn’t improve the situation . . .)

Lots of lunch.

Had lunch with Rebecca. Everyone needs to know her, but since this is impossible, read her blog. I found out at this lunch that she can read minds.

Had lunch with Maggie and Kenzie, naturally. Loved talking to them about all the important stuff, like circumcision. 😉

Fancy film festivals.

Not really. But sort of. The putter-onners of the Ash Festival sure did try to make a fancy black tie event, the sort of effort I appreciate, even if I can’t appreciate the artsy movies they showed. But mostly, Caitlin and I look soooo bored and entitled in this photo and it amuses me.

There I was, chillin’ with Nathanael, when suddenly I was 9 months pregnant. Not pregnant—BAM!—9 months pregnant. I’m glad the real thing doesn’t work that way.

^^^ For a visual, here’s what our future children are going to look like. Sweet spirits, you might say. Adelaide and Benedict Neil!

We got into the car, picked up his brother (which, for Jared’s sake, will not be part of the real deal, knock on wood), and drove to Utah Valley Hospital. As I was extracting my gravid self from the vehicle, I realized, Crap! I didn’t ever make my birth plan. There’s no way the doctor is going to let me give birth standing up now. But………..you know what? It’s my first child. Who even cares? This is like a trial run anyway. I’ll just do it how everyone does it, the “normal” way, and have a standing-up home birth next time.

I expressed my initial worry to Nathanael as he and Jared were removing multiple pieces of luggage from the trunk, and he agreed, “Yeah, it’s the first one. It doesn’t even matter.”

Once they had stacked my many suitcases on the curb, I held my hand out and said, “Wait a second. Before we go in there and get all set up and everything, I should take a pregnancy test. Just in case. I mean, I don’t want to find out I’m not actually pregnant halfway through the procedure.”

So we (just Nathanael and I; Jared had disappeared at this point) walked to Smith’s, which was handily located across the parking lot. We found a pregnancy test right by the cashier where they normally have gum (how convenient!). [There was some suspicion of the person in front of us stealing something, but then it turns out she was a fellow employee. Phew! That was close.]

We were about halfway across the parking lot on our way back to the hospital (pregnancy test long forgotten) when all of a sudden, we saw men with guns and heard gunfire. Oh yeah! I thought. The Iraq War is going on today. (Apparently I’m like 4? 8? 12? years behind politically?)

Nathanael pulled out his rifle and joined the battle. But the weird thing is, the war (and by consequence, the parking lot) was separated by a massive, beginningless and endless paper accordion curtain. My mom has these on our windows upstairs… Just picture paper folded like an accordion hung from a window. It’s that simple. Except for this was hung from the heavens.

Nathanael ran to the bottom of the curtain, dropped to his stomach, and lifted up the bottom of it to fit the barrel of his rifle through. That’s what the rest of the Americans were doing, too. Just shootin’ away under a paper curtain. I ran to where he was to observe the battle and saw that the Iraqis (sorrynotsorry if that’s politically incorrect, but this is a dream) were doing the same on the other side. Nathanael was literally dodging bullets and I suddenly realized that my pregnant self better get away from the action. I also had a brief moral dilemma, wondering if Nathanael felt bad killing people. Then I remembered that we’re in a war, man!

So I found a bench about 20 feet away where another wife was sitting. Suuuuuper safe. As we sat there together, I asked, “Don’t you think we’re sort of big targets just sitting up like this?” When I glanced at her to see her response, she was suddenly draped across the bench, with her head hanging off one side and her feet of another, and she replied, “That’s why I’m laying like this.” I immediately mimicked her position and found that poof! My belly was gone again.

The end.

And just for fun, an adult morph of our faces. Interesting.

And just because I know someone will ask: much to my dismay, I am not, in fact, pregnant. But Henry and Molly need cousins close to their age, that’s all I’m saying!